Christopher Weeks

master gardener

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since Jun 24, 2018

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Biography

I steward 20 acres of Cromwell Sandy Loam in the north woods of Minnesota. I clear birch and aspen as needed to plant food sources.

I always have more projects going than I can keep up with which isn't really awesome but I don't know what to change.

I vote for Libertarians and Socialists because they know what it means to have principles and that matters more to me than the exact details of what they believe in. I'm a gun-toting vegetarian. I write code for cash and grow food because no amount of cash will buy real food these days.

I have a wife, two kids, two grandkids, and three cats. I've never had a dog, but I'm thinking about changing that. I hike, garden, read, play games, code, cook, spin and knit, putter, and play at arting.

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Carlton County, Minnesota, USA: 3b; Dfb; sandy loam; in the woods

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Recent posts by Christopher Weeks

Potato onion harvest and breeding

I've cellared and replated 2 cm bulbs, but they were totally and clearly bulbs, not tender shoots. In your position, I'd mulch them, leave them, and cross my fingers.

1 day ago

alliums

The Best Way to make Cinnamon Toast?

My mother made cinnamon toast when I was a child. I don't think I ever have on my own. (I should ask my kids.) But from fifty-year-old memories, we'd butter eight slices of bread and put them in a cookie sheet, spoon white sugar onto the bread and top it with a heavy sprinkle of ground cinnamon. Then it went under the broiler until the sugar melted and absorbed the cinnamon. The goal was to let it burn, but just the scantest amount and then pull it out.

I have no opinion on the "best" way -- it's my only experience.

1 day ago

cooking

Depression Era Cooking Tricks

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:My parents were in France during the Occupation in WWII and they were always hungry.

One vegetable that grew with abandon were the Jerusalem artichokes. The Germans called them "topinambours" and that is still what we call them in French.

My wife's grandparents hid in the French countryside during the occupation and he eventually joined the Maquis. They had to eat loads of topinambour to survive and spent the rest of their lives hating that "pig food". When it started showing up in upscale grocery stores around 1990, they mocked the people buying it.

1 day ago

frugality

You get to go forward or backwards in time....where and when?

How am I allowed to interact with the world I'd be visiting? And are we assuming there's a single authoritative timeline and I would see the only possible future if that's the way I went?

My answer really depends on the above, but my first inclination is to stay right where I am and bip back in time 500 years to see how the land was being stewarded and what I could learn.

1 day ago

meaningless drivel

The great big thread of sunchoke info - growing, storing, eating/recipes, science facts

I've had a thing happen to me over the last year or so. I think I've developed a food-aversion to cooked sunchokes. Just the idea of eating them as the primary thing in a stew or mash is triggering my gag reflex. But pulling them out of the ground, washing them off, and eating them raw is delicious. I wonder if anyone else has ever faced this and whether there's anything I can do about it.

1 day ago

perennial vegetables

What fiction are you reading right now? How is it?

I'm reading the new translation of The Illiad that got a bunch of attention a couple of years ago. (The foreword was fascinating, but the poem is still kind of boring, to me.)

1 day ago

meaningless drivel

Foraging 200,000 Calories from 10 Different Species

Neat! This isn't a plant that I know, but looking through pictures of the various jewelweed / touch-me-nots found in MN, it seems like something I've seen around but not engaged with. I'll try to remember to keep my eye out for it.

Also, the video of the seeds exploding at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impatiens_glandulifera is impressive. :)

2 days ago

projects

Help ease the burden of Ianto Evans' hospice

Apparently, Ianto Evans needs a lot of care just now and they're soliciting donations to make things a little easier as he passes.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/ianto-evans-end-of-life-love-and-support-for-linda

Ianto is the father of the rocket mass heater and the Oregon cob movement. He was an early pioneer of organic polyculture. And if you grow fava beans in the US, you may well have some of his genetics in your field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ianto_Evans
https://permies.com/wiki/8313/Hand-Sculpted-House-Ianto-Evans
https://permies.com/wiki/44429/Rocket-Mass-Heaters-Ianto-Evans

2 days ago

crowdfunding

Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Does it include plant identification, caveats about seasonal considerations.

Not much. In passing it tells you that wild carrots look like poison hemlock, but it is absolutely not teaching you to forage. Sherman recommends following Linda Black Elk and field guides written by natives. And then he recommends the usual suspects: Alan Bergo, Pascal Baudar, Alexis Nikole Nelson. I thought there was a Sam Thayer mention but I'm not seeing it now.

How much is it cook book? And how much something else?

This is a great question. And it feels like it was designed specifically for my preference. Its DNA is 100% cook book. But it's extremely heavy on anecdote, options, history, personal experience, etc. So there's a lot to just read for fun in addition to the recipes.

2 days ago

books

Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

Nancy Reading wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:We had (vegetarian) Dried Venison and Corn Salad from page 56 for dinner. I’m sure we’ll have it again.

very nice - beans? and colourful corn :)

Anything you're seeing that looks like beans is actually hominy/posole. We have a big diversity of dried maize here and for this I suggested we mix it up to simulate "indian corn". The "venison" was a commercial vegan jerky seitan product. The big slabs are dehydrated apple and the black junk all over everything is ash of corn cob.

2 days ago

books